Recently in Economy Category

Republicans Eric Cantor, Mitch McConnell, John Boehner and the entire Fox Nation have been screaming at the tops of their lungs that the Stimulus bill passed a year ago "can't work", "isn't working", "won't work", "didn't work", etc., etc., even before the plan was put into effect.  Unfortunately for them, after only a year, reality is just a little bit different from the hysterics coming from these sources as well as Rush Limbaugh, Chairman of...

The latest scheme to make the Wall Street fat cats even fatter (with our money, of course), courtesy of their friends at the Federal Reserve:"During the financial crisis, it [the Fed]  bought hundreds of billions of dollars of real-estate loans and securities from banks to reduce mortgage rates and ease the pressure on bank balance sheets.  This, in turn, pumped hundreds of billions of new dollars into the economy, which has helped the banks-and bankers-to...

I think most people who live in the real world (leaving out the gutless wonders who inhabit Washington, D.C.) will agree that if we ever hope to get our fiscal house in order some tough choices will have to be made. David Pauly has a piece at Bloomberg today with 9 suggestions:1) Restore all income taxes to the pre-President George W. Bush level, not just those for people earning $250,000 or more. 2) Tax the...

Putting together different pieces of testimony from yesterday's hearings before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, it's easy to see how the New York Federal Reserve's "backdoor bailout" of Goldman Sachs and other large banks, via insurance giant AIG, became such a convoluted mess---nobody knew anything about it. Least of all the people who were allegedly in charge---Larry, Moe, and Curly former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, Fed chairman Ben Bernanke, and then head...

Whatever happened to that calm, cool, and collected candidate from the 2008 presidential campaign? This latest move is born out of sheer panic over the Scott Brown victory in Massachusetts and, by the way, something for which candidate Obama criticized John McCain for proposing during the campaign:"President Obama will call for a three-year freeze in spending on many domestic programs, and for increases no greater than inflation after that, an initiative intended to signal his...

Reuters has released some additional information contained in an e-mail correspondence between the New York Federal Reserve and the Securities and Exchange Commission (the alleged watchdog) that show the lengths to which they were willing to go to keep secret  this $70 billion "backdoor bailout" of Goldman Sachs, and other big banks, under the guise of saving AIG. Even so far as to have the release of the documents considered a matter of "national security."...

Up 'til now I haven't been a proponent of the "pass something" idea on health care reform legislation, but I think the time has come. It has become such a convoluted mess and such a distraction that it's time to get it off the table and move on to economic issues. Like taking on Wall Street for instance:"President Barack Obama on Thursday is expected to propose new limits on the size and risk taken by...

During his Wednesday testimony before the FCIC, Government Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein compared the financial crisis to a "hurricane," sort of an act of God, if you will, that nobody saw coming. For an "act of God" there were certainly a series of consequences that just happened to be very favorable and very profitable for Goldman. God must be on the GS payroll. How's this for fortuitous timing:"In 2006 and 2007, Goldman Sachs Group...

On Wednesday (January 13) Government Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein was questioned by FCIC chairman Phil Angelides about some, shall we say, less than ethical practices at Goldman. In essence what Goldman is accused of doing is selling securities as safe investments while at the same time betting their value would go down, Here is a portion of the transcript, from McClatchy:"PHIL ANGELIDES (the commission chairman): I want to ask you about a very specific...

There's a lot of good stuff coming out of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) hearings. In fact, it's starting to take on sort of a Watergate-y feel about it, or as George Costanza put it, it's like an onion, the more layers you peel back, the more it stinks. There is too much to cover in one post, so please indulge me. I hope you find it as interesting as I do. On Thursday...